Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or a community, referred to as a crowd. Typical crowdsourcing tasks utilize an open call, which invites members of the public to carry out the task or portions of the task. In this form of distributed problem solving, various solutions are typically submitted by the crowd, and the crowd can also review the various solutions to find the best solutions. Crowdsourcing is increasing in use in a variety of fields as a relatively inexpensive way to find creative solutions to problems.
One type of crowdsourcing allows “requesters” to post tasks that can then be completed by “providers”. Such tasks typically require human intelligence and are typically tasks that computers are unable or not well suited to perform.